In the late Qing Dynasty, Empress Dowager Cixi took charge of the imperial court. At this time, it was the reign of the puppet emperor, the Guangxu Emperor. He was at the mercy of others and was in a very gloomy mood. But at this time, a woman appeared, and her appearance made the Guangxu Emperor become sunny, and she was also the Guangxu Emperor's favorite concubine, Zhenfei.
Zhenfei (贞夫人), also known as Emperor Keshun (1876-1900), was a member of the Tatar clan, and it was common for people to refer to her as the Zhenfei she had been given. She was the daughter of The Right Attendant of Hubu, Changshu, a Manchurian red flag bearer, and the most favored of the only two concubines in Guangxu. In the "National News and Preparation", it is said: "But Concubine Zhen was well-behaved and pleasing to the people, gonghanmo, good at chess, and served the emperor around the day, eating and drinking with the emperor, and Emperor Dezong was particularly fond of her."
In the fifteenth year of Guangxu (1889 AD), the 13-year-old Tatara clan and his 15-year-old sister were elected to the palace (Changshu had three sons and five daughters. Four of them are Concubine Jin, and five daughters are Zhen Concubines), who are titled Jin Concubines and Zhen Concubines (concubines are the fifth rank among the eighth rank concubines, second to empresses, imperial concubines, concubines, and concubines). In the twentieth year of Guangxu (1894 AD), Empress Dowager Cixi was six decades old, and the two were able to gain grace and rise to the concubine position, and in the same year, because of their rebellion against Cixi, they were stripped of their robes and demoted to nobles in the name of "xi shang and flashy, and often begged", and in the next year, they were reinstated as zhen concubines.
Princess Zhenfei has a cheerful personality, is lively and active, and has a strong sense of curiosity. She was very disgusted by the red tape and dull lifestyle in the palace, and especially disgusted with the deceit and intrigue in the palace. She loves new things and lives an uninhibited life. Zhenfei's personality, influenced by innate factors, is also related to her growing environment.
Princess Zhen and her sister Concubine Jin grew up in Guangzhou with their uncle Changshan. Although the Guangzhou general Chang Shan was a military general, he liked to befriended literati and inkers, and he once hired Wen Wenwen Tingshi to teach his two nieces to read. Wen Tingshi was a generation of celebrities, and later even the high school was listed as the eye of the list.
Guangzhou is the most important port city for trade between the five ports, the earliest to open up, the earliest to contact with the Western capitalist world, the most affected, and the ideology is much more open than in the interior. Coupled with Chang Shan himself's wide friendship with celebrities and scholars, many of whom were famous figures with advanced ideas, these had a great impact on the formation of Zhenfei's thoughts and personality.
In addition, Zhenfei's two eldest brothers, Zhirui and Zhijun, are also relatively open-minded figures, and Zhenfei's mother is also very open, and the edification of the whole family on her is a factor that cannot be ignored.
Why Guangxu likes Zhenfei, on the one hand, is because Zhenfei is still young, lively and lovely, and has shallow experience, so she has no intentions, on the other hand, because Zhenfei advocates Western learning and has her own unique views on the affairs of the DPRK and China, which coincides with the Guangxu Emperor's idea of restoration. ("National News")
The most controversial behavior of Princess Zhenfei was that she liked to wear men's clothes to meet the Guangxu Emperor.
The reason why Zhenfei wanted to wear men's clothes to see Guangxu was actually not her intention. According to the royal rules, if the emperor wants to summon concubines to sleep, he must "back to the palace", that is, after the concubines are washed, the eunuch takes a quilt and wraps it up and sends it to the emperor's bedchamber. However, not all concubines have to go back to the palace, and there are also many concubines who are particularly loved by the emperor, so when they are summoned by the emperor, they "go to the palace".
However, according to the regulations of the Qing Dynasty, women could not enter the place where the emperor approved the recital. However, sometimes the Guangxu Emperor especially liked to have someone to accompany him when he was reviewing the recital, so if he wanted to find concubines at this time, he would let them dress up as men and enter the place where the recital was reviewed to find the emperor.
Guangxu was very fond of Zhenfei, so he often let Zhenfei go to him when he was reviewing the recital, so Zhenfei had to wear men's clothes to go in, so that Zhenfei wore men's clothes more times, and people thought that this was Zhenfei's special hobby.
However, Princess Zhen's extraordinary behavior aroused the envy of Empress Dowager Cixi.
On July 20, the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), the Eight-Nation Alliance army came to the city of Beijing. Cixi decided to take Guangxu and the rest of the party out of Xi'an. At this time, Empress Dowager Cixi remembered Zhenfei's various behaviors that were not as good as she usually wanted, so she found an excuse and forcefully said that it was inconvenient to take Zhenfei away, and that she was afraid that she would be young and provoke right and wrong, so she ordered the eunuch to open the manhole cover in front of the Leshou Hall and ask Zhenfei to commit suicide, and Zhenfei refused to die. Cixi then ordered the eunuch to push Zhenfei into the well, and when Zhenfei died, she was only twenty-five years old.
Mainstream historians believe that the cause of Zhenfei's death was angered by supporting Guangxu in carrying out the Wushu Reform Law and competing with Cixi for the supreme power, but some historians believe that Zhenfei was mainly killed because she repeatedly violated the taboos of the palace, sold officials and accepted bribes, and qing dezong had a special affection for her, snubbed Cixi's niece Empress Longyu, and eventually ended up being killed.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the famous Qing palace woman Deling recorded in the "Yingtai Weeping Blood Record" that the Guangxu Emperor summoned Zhenfei almost every day and went to Zhenfei's Jingren Palace every three or four days. The clever Concubine Zhen understood the difficulties of the Guangxu Emperor's situation and the pain in her heart, and was very understanding and sympathetic to him. Princess Zhenfei was an amorous and kind maiden, who did everything possible to be warm and considerate and cared for the Guangxu Emperor, and did everything to make her husband feel warm and happy.
According to the "Records of the Palace Women's Talks", there are old palace women who recall Zhenfei like this: When Zhenfei is mentioned, she is not a piece of beautiful jade, let alone a character who comes out of the mud and is not stained. She has also gained power and sold officials. In the history of the late Qing Dynasty, in addition to Cixi, Zhenfei was the most legendary and highly anticipated concubine. Although she only lived for a short period of 25 years, people still relish her story to this day.